I've got a ghost submission on my Workshop (my Steam profile says I have 1 more submission than I actually do) and I've seen the same thing happening on other contributer's profiles at varying numbers.

SO MY THEORY IS THAT

The difference between the two numbers is the number of items that are being testing behind the scenes.

There was nothing to win in the last contest, which ruined a bit the idea of "a contest you only need to know how to type to win".
I at least expected the winners to receive a Community version of the item they described. They only get mentionned on the wiki and that's not even Valve.

Sure, descriptions are great, but you don't pay much attention to them. You read them one time, eventually you laugh, and that's it. Not everything needs to have a joke on it, anyway: if you want one, that's the job of Description Tags.

Also, looks like I was right to go to sleep right after work, because today we got no-fucking-thing

I honestly think Australian Christmas 2011 was a massive misstep and those Christmas hats were a warning sign of a cancer that could destroy TF2. The assets were donated to Valve so they could use them, and they decided to profiteer with them. And now the economy is paying for it.

If that was the direction of updates to come, I would rather not have updates anymore.

I'm just saying it.

EDIT: Call me dumb. But at the time I saw all the stuff promoting the Christmas update showing every class (except Pyro) wearing the B.M.O.C. and was rather excited. I thought it would be some general free/achievement hat. Then it turned into a random chance luck of the draw bullshit thing that turned into a massive fiasco at the end. I worked my ass off grinding for coal.

So still no update, I think Valve may want to make some updates and add boring items to create "item startvation", since the halloween update had clrearly too many items and players could'nt really care about that many items, make unintresting updates and add mediocre items from time to time, then make a huge awesome update with awesome content.

I honestly think Australian Christmas 2011 was a massive misstep and those Christmas hats were a warning sign of a cancer that could destroy TF2. The assets were donated to Valve so they could use them, and they decided to profiteer with them. And now the economy is paying for it.

If that was the direction of updates to come, I would rather not have updates anymore.

I'm just saying it.

EDIT: Call me dumb. But at the time I saw all the stuff promoting the Christmas update showing every class (except Pyro) wearing the B.M.O.C. and was rather excited. I thought it would be some general free/achievement hat. Then it turned into a random chance luck of the draw bullshit thing that turned into a massive fiasco at the end. I worked my ass off grinding for coal.

How does that relate to gameplay? No seriously, how do the cosmetics and the "economy", which are optional and you can freely ignore, affect you in a way that you'd rather have the devs stop updating the game, despite gameplay stuff free to be improved?

Seriously, you feel gratification out of complaining, don't you? Complaining because the virtual Santa hat is hard to get, that sure as fuck ruins the game. Cancer? You call that cancer? Freaking cosmetics being hard to get? YOU having trouble getting them?

If you want to play doll dress up so hard, there is itemtest and gmod.

How does that relate to gameplay? No seriously, how do the cosmetics and the "economy", which are optional and you can freely ignore, affect you in a way that you'd rather have the devs stop updating the game, despite gameplay stuff free to be improved?

Seriously, you feel gratification out of complaining, don't you? Complaining because the virtual Santa hat is hard to get, that sure as fuck ruins the game. Cancer? You call that cancer? Freaking cosmetics being hard to get? YOU having trouble getting them?

If you want to play doll dress up so hard, there is itemtest and gmod.

No. The issue I had was that Valve was given resources and used them in an exploitative fashion that directly went against the nature of the gesture.

Or the guy who made them could have opted for not agreeing to go with it. It's not like people contribute with the sole purpose of making money. Not to mention, paying people for making an item that would be handed to every player? Doesn't seem very financially suitable to me.

Meh, I don't care, I got the whole Half Life franchise for dirt cheap, and some discouts that allowed me to get other things for dirt cheap. Companies have to make a profit, and Valve manages to do so without being raging assholes.

Chill dude, Valve doesn't owe us anything you say, but they sure make enough money off items that they could spend time creating more content(they clearly are creating some big update though) for it or simply try to improve the game performance and fix things, like integrating more community fixes.
The amount of items they added ingame considerably increases fps lag for some, at least I saw a lot of complaints of the kind.

And I donated a free hat for christmas, which was cool only about 300 people got it, Valve told me before hand, before I agreed, that nor Valve nor I would see any monetary revenue from it, but they indirectly gained money through boosting sales doing the whole xmas coal crafting thing that you got from trading and playing games you bought previously or bought during these promotions.
Of course I imagined they'd do something like this and could have asked what they would do with it, but honestly I am more than happy for what I got already from the scout set.

What I'd rather expect is for them to take the time to fix things and bring community fixes from all the money they made off items or improve the SDK tools, though I guess Valve doesn't work like that, they'd probably rather create new content than make fixes it seems to me.
Oh and some more communication with the contributors would be nice, but it seems again that's not what they want.